


A Night At The Dry Cleaners

by auburn



Series: Kindness [2]
Category: Avengers (Marvel Movies), Captain America (Movies), Thor (Movies), captain america: the winter soldier - Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, Fluff, Gen, Hugging, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:21:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1575068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auburn/pseuds/auburn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Darcy is glad she invested in the good lingerie, meets the Winter Soldier, blows up an SUV, and still has no clean clothes for Monday morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Night At The Dry Cleaners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eretria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eretria/gifts).



> Set in a post Cap 2, Thor 2, Iron Man 3 universe in which the Winter Soldier knows he was James Buchanan Barnes, but for now he's more interested in taking down his former HYDRA owners than getting those memories back.

"God, you're ugly," Darcy said to Rumlow because she had no functioning brain to mouth filter sometimes and a faulty sense of self-preservation. "And the sad thing is I've seen the file pics of you before Cap took the Triskelion down and you were ugly before too." It wasn't the burn scars so much, but the sneering twist to Rumlow's warped mouth that was now a permanent deformation. The outside distorted to reflect the inside. "Also, you're dumb. So dumb."

"Shut up." He still had a gun aimed at her and gestured with it for her to keep moving down the wet, night time street to a blacked out SUV waiting at the intersection. It sat down heavy on its tires, a sign that it was armored. Clint had told her that one day while they were people watching over a couple of coffees, when she made a remark about the way some limo cornered so bad the undercarriage scraped the pavement. Once she was in that SUV, Darcy thought, she was going to be cooked. Seriously, why had she thought it was worth trying to get to the dry cleaners before it closed tonight? It was winter time. It was already dark. She could have gone to that Stark Industries interview in a pair of jeans and a panda T-shirt on Monday. It wasn't like she didn't already have the job; it was just to set up her getting paid for it and health insurance. She really needed a paying job now the whole SHIELD gig wasn't going to happen.

As it was, she really hoped she'd be around on Monday to be embarrassed that she didn't have any other clean clothes. Except underwear. Mom would be proud if Darcy died, as at least her underwear was fresh. Though she probably would have words about it being a purple lace thong. They wouldn't put that in her obituary, would they?

Rumlow glared at her, snapping her out of her contemplation of what her obituary would read. Darcy responded by mouthing off some more. 

"If you're going to kidnap someone as a hostage, you need to get the right person, otherwise you are wasting everyone's time."

"Shut up."

The gun was dark and big and really ugly when it pointed at her. Darcy tripped along past a closed florist shop, a boutique with a heavy grill pulled down over the windows, and stopped in front of a tiny, hole-in-the-wall antique store across from ominously dark alley mouth. She clutched her purse closer to her at the same time she lifted her chin. She really needed to start carrying less junk; Doctor Oz said it was bad for the back and it made covertly rummaging through the contents problematical.

Time to piss Rumlow off some more. This was such a bad idea. Sharks' eyes had more warmth than Rumlow's did.

"Look, I know we're both brunettes and we all look alike to you because you never get your eyes above our collarbones, but me: intern; Jane: scientist and girlfriend." She closed her hand on the object she'd been feeling around to get. "See the difference? Or if you can't, how about we have different bra sizes – "

"Shut. Up."

"C'mon, it's no wonder it only took three people to take down HYDRA's operation in SHIELD if you're this incompet – "

She really should have expected the backhand, but Darcy'd thought she could eke out one more shut up before the jerk got physical. Her cheekbone ached and her ear rung on the side Rumlow hit. She staggered theatrically and he grabbed her arm and jerked her close. 

That was what she'd been waiting for. Instead of trying to twist away from him, Darcy stomped her heel down on Rumlow's foot – even combat boots with steel toes were vulnerable to a steel stiletto driving down through the laces. Of course it wasn't enough to slow Rumlow down, he was HYDRA and a former member of SHIELD's top Strike Team, but it distracted him long enough Darcy wrenched her arm away and managed to shove her taser, retrieved from the depths of her bag, right into his neck, triggering it for as long and high as it would discharge.

With an high _eeep_ she bolted across the street toward the alley she'd noticed, hoping like crazy she'd find somewhere to hide before whoever was in the SUV realized she'd got away.

Why, why had she chosen today to wear a pencil skirt? Bag thumping on her back, Darcy reached down and yanked the skirt up and as high as she could. At least now, she understood why the Black Widow always wore cocktail dresses that barely skimmed her thighs. 

Behind her, she heard a yell and running footsteps. Why couldn't Rumlow have stayed down longer? She hadn't even reached the end of the alley and the only thing in it was a giant green dumpster and even if she hid behind it, that wouldn't conceal her from the broad-shouldered figure striding down it from the other end like a Terminator. Whoever he was, he was just a silhouette in the washed out back-light from the next street, long hair lifting as he brought up one hand, a big handgun in it.

Darcy tried to skid to a stop, but all her momentum kept her moving toward the new guy and then he was even with her, his free hand shoving her into the wall and firing with the other one as too many bullets were zinging down the alley way. She must have really pissed off Rumlow, because he was definitely trying to kill her now. And this guy, whoever he was, just crowded her into the wall without a word and emptied his gun in his Rumlow's direction in a sweep Darcy thought was meant to make Rumlow take cover or something. She was going to have bruises on top of the bruises Rumlow gave her, but she'd write off all these as 'saved my life' bruises.

With a grunt he tossed the empty gun away (someone needed to speak to this guy about leaving weapons lying around where a kid could find them, that was just careless, but Darcy thought that maybe she could leave that lecture to Steve, you know, for sometime after the firefight), stepped across the alley and latched onto the giant metal dumpster. It screeched and banged, bullets ricocheting off the metal, flashing and sparking and digging up chips of brick wall that cut right through the sleeves of her blouse and into her arms, as the dumpster tore away from the wall.

He threw the dumpster down the alley at Rumlow.

One-handed.

Headlights flared and brakes screeched at the far end of the alley and, oh crap, it was the SUV Rumlow had had waiting for them. The engine revved loud and it accelerated down the alleyway, halogen headlights blinding, metal shrieking as its mirrors tore off and the sides scraped the walls in a shower of more sparks.

Darcy might have screamed. She wasn't going to deny it, she just couldn't be sure, because she couldn't hear it.

Terminator Guy pulled another gun and fired through the glare of the headlights at the SUV's windshield. It slowed, but kept rolling. He ejected one clip and loaded another almost casually as the SUV got closer.

Darcy was going to be a thin bloody pancake and not in the dieted to get this thin good fashion. There was no where to get out of the SUV's way.

Or maybe there was.

Terminator Guy wrapped a hard, warm, really muscled (and she set the bar high; she got to see Thor and Hawkeye and Captain America in shirtsleeves regularly) arm around her waist and lifted her off her feet. She grabbed onto his shoulders automatically as he took three running steps toward the SUV and leaped.

They landed, half-crouched, on the hood. It bowed and dented under the guy's combat boots. Darcy added bruised ribs to her list. She didn't care.

He shoved the barrel of the gun in his hand through the holes already blown in the windshield and emptied it. Then he vaulted onto the roof and ran, still carrying her, now with both arms. Bullets punched through the roof just behind them, but they were too fast. Or Terminator Guy was; Darcy was just along for the ride.

He jumped off the SUV, landed and rolled, keeping her from hitting too hard – though, damn, her elbow hit the pavement and so did the back of her head, ouch, ouch, ouch, – let go, flipped to his feet, drew another gun from the harness on his back and fired it into the three goons that tried to come out of the back hatch.

Three goons. Three shots.

Darcy hadn't even gathered her coordination together enough to get to her feet. She was vacillating between wondering if she had a concussion and freaking out over what had smeared in her hair. He snagged her arm again. This time, he lifted her a little more carefully. It didn't feel like her shoulder was coming out of the socket, at least.

"Let's go." He sounded hoarse, his voice unused and muffled.

He closed his hand around her wrist and dragged her along. Darcy didn't have any time to decide if she wanted to or not.

They reached the end of the alley. He pulled what looked like a chrome ping pong ball from his belt and rolled it down the alley toward the SUV, then pulled Darcy around the corner with a muttered, "Move."

"Was that – ?" Oh, crap. Darcy _moved_ , because sure enough, that was some kind of grenade. The explosion made her ears ring on top of the tinnitus from all the gunfire. A wave of fire bloomed out from the alley mouth behind them and into the street, searing a car parked on the other side and setting off a wailing chorus of alarms.

In the orange-ish street light, she could see Terminator Guy really lived up to the sobriquet. One arm seemed to be shiny steel. The rest of him was dressed in black body armor and tac gear. When he turned his head toward her, he didn't have a face, just a black half-mask and breather over his nose and mouth and expressionless black goggles over his eyes. No wonder she couldn't make out his face before.

Darcy squeaked. 

She'd just been kidnapped/rescued by the Winter Soldier. She'd seen video from the time HYDRA went after Black Widow and Captain America with him in the lead. She'd also heard about him really being some old buddy of Cap's who'd been brainwashed and gone rogue since shaking the programming. But that really didn't reassure her at the moment.

"Um, thanks," she tried out. Make them recognize you as human, create a bond, sympathy, something something, damn it, she should have paid more attention in Psych class. It would also help if she could remember the guy's real name. Jimmy, Jamie, Barney, Buddy? Calling him the wrong name would be bad. Why did she never pay enough attention to the important stuff instead of playing Candy Crush on her phone? She really should. Now she couldn't remember if it was Stockholm syndrome or Lima that would encourage a bad guy to spare her life. If only she'd had any clue she was going to end up interning for the girlfriend of an alien god and acting as a kind of dogsbody for a bunch of dysfunctional superheroes one day.

Of course, if she'd had any idea about that, she'd have dropped out of high school and joined a nunnery.

No, she wouldn't have. She liked sex.

Dysfunctional or not, whatever else you could say about the Avengers, they were all stunningly attractive. How else would she ever get to ogle Captain America's sweet ass in sweat pants early in the morning or Thor's pecs after he came out of the shower in nothing but a towel? She was shallow. So what? Tony Stark was definitely a genius for getting them all to live at the Avengers Tower and inviting Darcy to use one of the guest apartments.

And if it was because she had an amazing rack, well... she did have an amazing rack.

It was never boring, at least, though she really thought boring was under-rated as a life choice.

Winter Soldier didn't seem to notice, even though her blouse had ripped like tissue when he pushed her into the alley wall and her purple (to match the thong, shut up, Mom) bra was all that was covering her up up-top at this point. She tried to tug her blouse back into place but had to give it up as the fabric just ripped more and settled for trying to brush the icky brick chips out of her decolletage.

He didn't seem that interested in her any more.

"So," Darcy said, "this has been a blast, but I think I'll just head home now. Not that you don't know how to show a girl a good time or anything."

There was just no way to even guess what he was thinking with those bug goggles hiding his eyes and the mask over his face. She thought his forehead might be wrinkling a little bit. Great, he was frowning. She'd pissed him off.

"I used to know how to do that," he said in a creaky, thoughtful voice.

Oh. Oh, now her heart was breaking. The Tower ran on gossip and Jane had said Thor said Tony said the Russians and HYDRA had been making him kill people for them since WWII. They never let him have any life at all, just kept him on ice when he didn't have a mission. Like, when was the last time this guy had been out on a date? Or held someone's hand?

That made her realize he wasn't holding onto her arm any longer. 

"I bet you did. I mean, anyone probably had more game that Steve, considering the way he gets embarrassed by _me_ flirting even now, but I've seen the pictures and you were a cutie," Darcy told him. "I bet you still are." Without thinking about it, because then she'd chicken out, she reached up and felt around his jaw for a catch or something to get the mask off.

He caught her hand in his metal one and she wondered if her fingers were about to be crushed into a billion bony splinters, but he just pushed her hand away and unhooked the mask himself. A second later he shoved the goggles over his forehead, pushing the long hair away from his face too.

She'd been right. Cutie, even with the shadows around his eyes and a scruff of beard dark along his jaw. A muscle clenched in his cheek and he blinked at her. Long lashes. Why did the guys all get long lashes and she had to spend a fortune on Revlon and Maybelline? So unfair.

"Called it," she crowed anyway. "Totally a hottie."

"Back up will be coming," he said finally. "Do you want to come with me or not?"

"Dude, you're totally supposed to say 'come with me if you want to live'," Darcy said.

He looked at her and frowned. "Yes."

"It's a quote from a movie... Yeah, yeah, let's just get out of here and I'll educate about classic action movies later." He was so much better looking than Arnie.

Darcy was wheezing before they made it to the end of the block. She really needed to do more in the gym than watch the guys. Also, heels might be good for stomping, but they sucked for running; she'd just been too terrified to register that when she got away from Rumlow. If they could just stop for a second, she'd get them off.

"I can't carry you and function," Winter Soldier told her.

"Just leave me here to die," Darcy gasped and draped herself over the hood of a car. It was some kind of old muscle car; she didn't do models and years or any of that, she just liked cars that looked pretty and ran when she turned the key. This one might have been the former once, but from the blotches of rust and primer and the dents in the passenger side door, she had doubts about the later.

With a groan, she hiked her leg up and began trying to pry open the buckle on the ankle strap holding her shoe on. She would run better barefoot.

When he started walking again, she thought he was going to do what she'd said and leave her.

Instead he circled the car to the driver's side and made Darcy shriek when he used his metal fist to punch out the window, unlock the door and get in. He didn't bother sweeping the broken glass from the seat. As soon as he was in, he tore the ignition out and expertly hotwired it. Once the engine caught – with a throaty growl – he leaned over and opened the passenger side door.

"Get in."

Darcy got in. She even got the seat belt on, though her fingers were shaking.

When he put the car in gear, for a second she thought it was going to stall. The headlights were alarmingly dim. If they were in a car chase in this, they were going to lose. The engine leveled out and ran steadier as soon as they were on the road, though.

"Why the clunker?" she demanded. They had passed numerous newer, nicer, faster cars as they ran. She couldn't have said who made them, but at least they were made this century.

"No alarm, no GPS to track."

"And here I thought you picked the one where the owner will probably thank you for stealing it just to be nice."

He didn't answer, just drove, eyes moving from in front of them to the mirrors like clockwork. His flesh and blood hand stayed on the gear shift as he kept them right on the speed limit, winding their way from the deserted neighborhood where Darcy's dry cleaners did business and into a series of residential streets with even less traffic. She wondered where exactly they were going or if they were just _going_. It wasn't like she was famous for her plans, so if it was the latter, she couldn't criticize. Though Stark's Avengers Tower sounded like a great destination with its security and superheroes in residence, but even she had to admit the traffic there was a bitch any time of the day or night and the creepy HYDRA goon squads would probably be expecting that and waiting for them along the way.

She began feeling through her purse, because she knew she had some candy stashed inside and if she'd ever needed a sugar rush it was right now.

He startled her by speaking when she'd thought he wasn't going to say anything more. "I'm not."

"Not what?" Darcy asked around a mouthful of Hershey's Hug. She liked the white chocolate and chocolate ones. She also liked the dark chocolate, the chocolate and almonds, chocolate and caramel, and honestly, anything with chocolate. Chocolate covered bacon. Chocolate covered pistachios.

Though she drew the line at chocolate covered ants and other insects.

"Nice."

She leaned back in the bucket seat and contemplated him. Maybe he didn't think he was nice, and okay, maybe he wasn't sweet and polite like Cap, but he wasn't _bad_. He'd been one of the good guys once. She said, "Oh, I don't know. I'm thinking you saving my life was really nice. I know, I know, I'm biased, but you didn't have to."

It was hard to tell with just indirect, sporadic streetlights illuminating his face, but Darcy thought his cheeks darkened a little. Was he blushing? She'd thought only Cap did that.

"Anyway," she went on, waving her fist with a handful of foil covered candy toward him and making him duck his head to the side, "unlike a certain billionaire whose name starts with S and ends with K, I know I'm not in fact the center of the universe. So why were you there? Please don't tell me we use the same dry cleaner."

"No."

Darcy unpeeled another chocolate and popped it in her mouth. She wondered where the Avengers had their costumes cleaned. How did you clean Kevlar and unstable molecule fabrics and leather catsuits? Wait, was the Black Widow's catsuit leather or something else? And what about the inside of Ironman's suit? Darcy would bet that got pretty rank after a big throw down. No matter how cool he acted, he still must sweat, after all.

"I was there for Rumlow."

"Oh."

"He was there when Pierce gave me the last mission. He has intel on HYDRA's US operations. I need to find the other bases."

She peeled another chocolate, but suddenly didn't want it. She held it out to him. "Kiss?" He hadn't meant to save her, she'd just been in the way. She perked up. He'd thrown a dumpster at Rumlow after all.

"What?" He turned his head to frown at her.

Darcy waved the candy. "Hershey's Kiss? Actually it's a Hug, but – never mind. Chocolate. Candy."

His look turned skeptical, then a wash of headlights lit his profile from behind them and he turned to look.

"Forget it, just eyes on the road, eyes on the road!" Darcy urged him.

The headlights were on bright and coming up behind them way too fast.

Winter Soldier responded by hitting the gas. Darcy responded by dropping the rest of the candy and ducking as a fusillade of bullets smashed out the back window and the windshield shattered into a crackled mess. The vehicle behind them was probably another one of those evil black SUVs – HYDRA didn't care about its carbon footprint, she'd bet – and sat up way higher than the crappy stolen car they were in. A piece of glass from the rear window sliced open the Winter Soldier's cheek just under his eye. More of it landed in Darcy's already sticky hair. Darcy stayed doubled over and just turned her head to watch him.

The Winter Soldier steered with his metal arm and used his other hand to tear open a pocket on his pants. He pulled out something like a inch thick black slice of pie. It clicked and unfolded into a dinner plate-size circle.

He held it out to Darcy. "Hit the center button twice and throw it onto the hood," he ordered.

She took it apprehensively. "Is this a good time to mention I throw like a girl?"

"No."

"What happens if I press the button and don't throw it?"

"We blow up instead of them."

"I don't like that plan," Darcy told him. She undid the seat belt, twisted around onto her knees on the seat, and risked peering around the side of the seat's headrest. The wind rushing in where the glass had been slapped her hair in her face and made her shiver. "Also, bad news, I think there are two of them."

Winter Soldier swore in what she guessed was Russian. It was frankly really sexy, especially with the hint of a growl in his husky voice. Shallow, she was so shallow. Darcy didn't care; thinking stupid shallow things distracted her from her impending death.

"Uh oh," she muttered as the SUV rushed up behind their car and hit the back end. The car shimmied and wanted to fishtail, but Winter Soldier wrestled the steering wheel back under control and hit the gas. The tires squealed for traction a second, then they leaped forward away from the SUV.

"Now," he ordered.

Darcy knelt on the seat, stabbed the button twice like he'd told her, and side armed it like a Frisbee through the opening where the rear window had been. It bounced over the hood and then lodged between the windshield wipers. Darcy whooped and then ducked down. The SUV braked in a panic, the driver swerving into a streetlight pole and bailing out.

A second later, the SUV blew up in a spectacular fireball.

"Eat that, bitches," Darcy crowed only to squeak as headlights from the second SUV lit up the interior of the car as it caught up with them. "You don't have another Frisbee bomb, do you?" 

"No. Just hold on."

She snapped her seat belt on again.

He kept the car just ahead of the SUV, despite the way it wanted to shake apart. The grinding noise from the back could not be good; Darcy didn't need to be a mechanic to know that.

Up ahead, they were approaching a cross street with much heavier traffic, semis and delivery trucks rumbling their way into the city. A long line of them were waiting for the red to turn. The light was still green their way, but the Winter Soldier slowed the car.

"Hey, green for go, red for stop," Darcy said. "Everyone with a driver's license or into kinky sex knows that. Wait – you do have a driver's license, right?"

He snorted softly.

"Of course you don't."

The light went yellow, then red. The SUV following them closed up right on their bumper. She was going to die at a red light. Did everyone from the nineteen-forties have a fetish for obeying traffic laws? Trucks began streaming across the intersection ahead of them. The Winter Soldier shifted gears again and the engine howled.

Darcy clapped her hands over her face, then peered through her fingers. 

They blew through the red light into the intersection, accelerating faster than ever. Lights from a huge semi, horn blaring, filled the passenger side window. The Winter Soldier wrenched the wheel to the left, then the right, Darcy screamed, and then they were shooting out of the intersection. Behind them, the semi truck plowed into the SUV and shoved it into the side of building.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God," she blurted, feeling like her heart might beat its way free of her chest, sick with adrenaline and terror and too much chocolate.

The Winter Soldier slowed them to safer speed, took a half dozen turns, shut the headlights off and then turned off the street and parked.

Darcy got out on wobbly legs and trotted after him without him saying anything. He took her through alleys and streets and a park, then up a fire escape to the roof of an apartment building. Her ankles were killing her and she had a blister on each little toe. She swallowed any complaints and even managed to not throw up. She was never wearing shoes she couldn't just kick off again.

When they finally came to a stop, she slumped down onto the roof and whimpered. Where they were, she could look up and see the A shining on the top of the Avengers Tower.

"Phone," the Winter Soldier said.

She began feeling for it at the bottom of her bag. While she did that, she asked, "Don't you have your own? This better not be an international call, my plan doesn't cover those – "

"Call your friends. Get one of them to come for you."

"Oh."

She scrolled through her contacts and found Jane's number. Thor was back (that was why HYDRA had wanted to snatch Jane!) so she thought Jane would probably be home and not in the lab. If Jane didn't answer, Darcy would try Clint's number, but she thought he was out of the country along with the Black Widow. And Captain America was in Paris, following a lead on... the Winter Soldier. Darcy would have to tell him that was a dead end, once she was somewhere safe. Meanwhile, it meant he was way too far away to come to her rescue right now.

Not that the Winter Soldier hadn't done pretty well, but she was so done with this shit. Action movies never mentioned blisters, nearly peeing yourself, or how much replacing pieces of your wardrobe would cost. It sucked.

Oh, look, Jane was answering.

"Darcy, whatever it is, can it wait. Thor is – " Jane sounded a little breathless. Darcy could just guess what Thor was doing with Jane.

"Can't wait. HYDRA tried to grab me thinking I was you and now I'm stuck on a roof top and I have blisters and I blew up an SUV and – "

"Darcy. Where are you?"

"I don't know. But I can see the tower," she added brightly.

"How did you – never mind. JARVIS can track your phone. Thor will come get you."

"I'll be waiting. I hope. I mean, unless more of those creeps show up, so could you have him hurry?"

Thor's voice came next. "I will find you, do not worry."

"Right, no worries. I'll – I'll, uh – "

JARVIS' voice interrupted with a polite cough sound. "If you will just leave the call open, I will direct Thor to your location as speedily as possibly, Ms. Lewis."

"Okay, right, I'm just going to wait then."

"Darcy?" Jane came back on the phone. "Thor's on his way. Are you okay? What happened?"

"I just wanted to get my dry cleaning."

"Okay."

She started to cry. It was just so stupid. She'd almost died over dry cleaning. It wasn't really about dry cleaning, it wasn't even about _her_ , they'd wanted _Jane_ , and that made it worse. Now that she was sort of safe, it all felt like too much and the tears were just happening. Jane started to yell over the phone. The Winter Soldier crouched in front of her and said, "Please don't do that."

Darcy gulped and blinked at him through her misted up glasses. He looked confounded and worried and the cut on his cheek was still bleeding. She lunged forward and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, hugging him tightly, and pressed a kiss to his other cheek. The tac vest he wore had too many buckles and it wasn't exactly comfortable smashing her breasts up against it. She kept squeezing him anyway.

He went rigid and then carefully pushed her away. She worried her bra was going to catch on something and slapped her hand up to catch it if it did.

Jane was still squawking from the phone Darcy had dropped.

"Why did you do that?" he asked her. He looked bewildered and curious and faintly suspicious. She hitched her bra strap higher and his gaze flickered to her hands, but veered away from her boobs. Bull hockey, he wasn't a nice guy. Tony and Clint would have looked. Even Thor would have.

"Dude, you saved my life and you look like you could do with a hug." She'd give him another one, if he didn't look like he'd jump out of his skin if she did.

"I don't need... hugs."

"Well, I do and it's too late now, because I've already hugged you." She rocked back though, because now she felt a little embarrassed. 

"Okay."

"Whatever. Just stay there a second." At least she wasn't crying any longer.

She plunged her hands into her bag again and he asked, "Are you looking for more candy?"

"Do you want some?"

"Maybe I want another kiss," he replied with a hint of mischief. "I didn't get the first one." Darcy's mouth dropped open. Holy hotcakes. He could flirt. The trickle of blood on his cheek distracted her.

"Just a second, then," she mumbled. 

She found what she wanted, the little box of Avengers Band-aids, manufactured by a company for the Maria Stark Foundation, all profits going to providing medical care for orphans and foster children in urban areas. She plucked out a Captain America one and brandished it at the Winter Soldier.

"Hold still."

He froze, head tipped down, long hair flipping over the goggles still pushed up like a headband, and let her smooth the Band-aid over the cut.

His fingers were touching it tentatively when Darcy scooped up her phone, snuggled in next to him and snapped a selfie.

"Why – "

"No one's ever going to believe me you were here if I don't have proof."

"Why would I want you to have proof?" he grumbled, but Darcy snatched to phone close to her chest.

A clap of lightning heralded Thor arriving overhead. The Winter Soldier jerked away from her and to his feet. He sprinted to the roof parapet and leaped off. 

By the time Darcy made it to her feet and over to the edge, he was gone.

Thor landed with a distinct, two footed thud behind her and asked urgently, "You are all right, Darcy? Jane is very worried about you."

She ignored him for just a moment to call out into the dark, hoping the Winter Soldier would hear, "Hey! If you ever want that kiss, come around to the Avengers' Tower!"

"Who are you calling to?" Thor asked. His eyes widened as he took in how much skin Darcy was showing when she turned back to him, but he didn't say anything. Jane was training him.

Darcy held up her phone gleefully to show the selfie. 

"You have a picture of you and the Winter Soldier, Steven's lost shield-brother?" Thor said.

"Yep," Darcy said. "Wait until I tell you about _my_ night."


End file.
